Attitudes and activities surrounding reproduction, contraception, and sexual behavior of the poor are comprehensible only in relationship to the larger context of their survivial strategies and social organization. I propose a nine month study, using participant- observation, of families living in a low income neighborhood in Syracuse, New York. The West-side of Syracuse, my research site, is a concentrated area of substandard housing, crowding, high crime, and illegitimacy. This area is racially heterogeneous, though the majority of residents are Black-American, there are whites and Puerto Ricans living there also. I will live, with my family, in this neighborhood and participate fully in the lives of the families in the area. Activities which I will particularly concentrate upon will be those concerned with the "benefit" perceived by the women of their pregnancies and childbirths. I will be concerned with understanding reproductive behavior as an adaptive response to particular conditions. These conditions will be discovered and analyzed by means of my daily intensive interaction with the women and their families. My study will be an ethnography of reproductive activity, its perceived and actual consequences.